Friday, 24 May 2013

Tales of Shedwood - Nottingham Castle

Another parcel arrived today from ebay. A Kiddies plastic castle manufactured by Superplay. For the princely sum of £15 inc postage I receved a barely used castle set. Of particular interest are the four round towers and the Castle Mansion.

However keen to get the new toy out of the box I headed down to the shed.....

I give you the start/work in progress of Nottingham Castle

From a scale perspective it works with 28mm and provides a whole host of options.

The figures in the tower are 28mm GW Bretonniam archers painted many moons ago

The only negative with this purchase are the reverse side of the castle walls. These are ‘not filled’ and the walkways are just simple plastic wooden effect boards. One option might be to take these walls (fill in the reverse side with filler and mount them back to back on foam blocks. I reckon the set has enough walls to create a four foot run done in this way.

At the moment I am debating whether the round towers would work better as a suitable barbican gate house for the keep.

Alternatively I might build a better gate for the town - so again the round towers could be used here. The Games work shop gate is set in a wall section but I reckon this could be cut out and used in the conversion. Alternatively These might form the framework of the castle keep with some big modifications done to the walls.

15 quid for a Castle!!!! Okay, the backs of the walls arent "up to Standard" but it´s still not bad. Idea...could you use a wall section to create a mould, bit of Silicon etc, then you could cast "infills" for the backs of the walls which would have the brickwork pattern and the same might work for the inside of the Towers, just using sections of the cast and cutting /shaping them as the plaster is going hard?

Now that's a castle, good buy for £15. I have play castle whch I bought at a car boot sale for a £5 with the same problem with the walls - no stonework detail on the back - since I use it for a 'backdrop' scenic item its not a problem. I'll be interested to see what you do with the wall sections.